And then, it was true: a strapping, blond-haired, blue-eyed Swedish lad from Bromma, who still had a long way to go to master the English language, became the first non-Canadian captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs.

He was not a Davey or a Dougie or a Wendel or the Chief. He was Mats (Sundin), Toronto’s commander-in-chief starting in 1997.

But the Leafs captain for the past 10 seasons, who also holds so many of the team records, is gone. Now it is time to find another leader and -- in Harold Ballard’s worst nightmare -- he might come from the other side of where the Iron Curtain used to drape.

Come the season opener on Oct. 9, there could be a brown-haired defenceman from the Czech Republic wearing the captain’s crest on the front of his Maple Leafs sweater.

“It would be an honour,” defenceman Pavel Kubina said on the opening day of training camp at Ricoh Coliseum. “When I go back with this team -- 80-years -- so much history with this team, and always, this team had a great captain.

“Always.”

Well, maybe not always, but quality at the top has been a consistent theme in Toronto. Kubina possesses some captain-like qualities, and he has experience. He was an alternate captain in Tampa Bay, an alternate with the Czech national team and the captain of Vitkovice, a Czech league club he played for during the NHL lockout.

His teammates in Toronto, such as Alex Steen, a Swede, and Tomas Kaberle, a friend and fellow Czech, describe him as “vocal” and “witty.” They say Kubina is a “leader in the dressing room.” Cliff Fletcher says Kubina “really cares” and that he is a rare thing on the current Maple Leafs roster: a player who has actually won a Stanley Cup.

But for all his affection for Kubina, Fletcher is still the same general manager who tried to ship him to San Jose last February; a deal the defenceman nixed with his no-trade clause. Ron Wilson, meanwhile, was the coach coveting him from afar.

“I am glad Pavel is here,” Wilson says. “I told him, ironically, that I am coaching him this year because he cost me my job last year. If he had said yes to a trade to the San Jose Sharks, maybe we would have gone a little farther [in the playoffs] and I wouldn’t be [the Leafs] coach.”

Wilson is not in a hurry to name a successor to Sundin. And he only just met Kubina for the first time yesterday. Kubina remembers when he met Sundin for the first time. It was at training camp two years ago. He was the new face in a strange dressing room full of long-time Leafs such as Bryan McCabe and Darcy Tucker. The captain was the first to approach.

Sundin asked if he needed help with a car, or finding a place to live, anything at all. And then he gave Kubina his cell phone number and, later that day, long after the players had scattered from the rink, he invited the newcomer to dinner. Over dinner, the captain provided the Czech with his frank assessment of the Leafs, and offered him a few friendly words of advice.

“You don’t see that much, especially from one of the best players in the league,” Kubina said. “You cannot replace a guy like that.”

But someone, someday, will replace Sundin. And Kubina, a Cup winner in Tampa, a vocal leader in the Leafs dressing room last season, and a defenceman Ron Wilson coveted in San Jose, has not started passing out his cell phone number to the newcomers just yet.

“I don’t have to do it today,” he said. “We have a team dinner tonight, so they will be taken care of.”